Fire Safety Standards in Australia

The UK Grenfell Tower disaster has sent a shudder through Australia’s property industry.

“Apartment buildings should be safe places for people to live and the scenes from London have been horrifying to watch”, said Ken Morrison, Chief Executive of the Property Council of Australia.

“We will follow the UK investigations closely to see if there are any lessons for Australia from this tragedy.

“It does seem that there have been multiple failures of compliance in this building that did not have a sprinkler system, adequate emergency lighting or a building-wide fire alarm.

“Australia already has appropriately strict fire safety standards, but if there are lessons to learn from the UK we should learn them.

“We fully support the need for building standards to be maintained and reinforced in a way that delivers safety for residents.

“Where sensible improvements can be made to improve the flow and availability of information on compliance with building codes, the industry will back them in.

“That includes working with regulators to enhance their capacity to deal with incidences of non-compliance, working across jurisdictions to get a common approach, and ensuring all participants in the supply chain are aware of their obligations.”